Now is the Time of Monsters
by alionhearted
Summary: monsters have to be understood before they can be stopped, and someone has taken an interest in eren yaeger's particular monster complex. heavy on the hurt, not much comfort. a/n: I may expand this into a multi-chapter plotted fic and bring in Mikasa and Armin if this piece is well received. Trigger warning: intense violence/torture/blood.


_A/N: This is a one-shot, but I may extend it into a multi-chapter fic and bring in Mikasa and Armin and expand it into a plotted out story if it's well received. C&C are always welcome! This is my first fic in the SNK universe, and I'm writing loosely from my own understanding of the world, so if there are any discrepancies, my bad. As always, characters and world do not belong to me. _

_**time of monsters**_

"Monster," the voice affirms, cutting into your subconscious. "They're monsters, it's that simple."

You try to move, but can't. Your limbs are strangely frozen. You can't see a thing. You are lying vertically on something cold, and there is cold metal scraping at your wrists, the only part of your body that any sensation is coming from.

"Stay still," a gruff voice says.

"I can't move." You say, panic edging its way into your voice.

"That'll be the sedative working," a woman's voice says. "At least we know it works on him, titan or not."

Titan.

Titan titan titan titan.

Something about that twists you into knots, making the contents of your stomach want to eject themselves from your body.

Titan titan titan titan.

"I've got to take some samples, but he'll need to have the sedative out of his system before I can."

"I'll wake him up," the woman says, and you hear the sound of plastic ripping, then of a syringe popping and being filled. When did you get such good hearing?

Titan titan titan titan.

Cloth is wrenched from your eyes, and you realize you had your eyes open the whole time. The bandage being violently ripped off tears skin off of your eyelids and you yelp.

"Stay still."

"Monsters," you say, forming the word with cool distaste. "Monsters?"

"Titans." She says. The needle is very large and she stabs it into your palm without warning. You flex your fingers as pain shoots up to your elbow, every vein in your palm in high resolution.

The drug shoots through your system in five tortuous minutes, until every vein is trying to pop out of your skin. Your blood feels hot. Inhuman.

Titan titan titan titan.

"Monsters have to be understood before they can be stopped," she says, bending over your face and pushing a strand of hair away from your forehead. Next she brings a pair of shears, waves them before your eyes distractedly as she takes a large metal cuff and jams it over your throat. You can still breathe, but barely, and the only sound you can make is breathy sighs of "what are you doing?"

She slices off your hair in chunks, it falls silently to the floor and you do not mourn it. It will grow back, and you are more focused on breathing, breathing, breathing through the cuff that is digging into your windpipe. Your blood still feels like iron in your chest, your heart is threatening to exit stage left and you have absolutely no control over it. It's not adrenaline either, or fear. You are strangely not afraid of anything she has done so far. Your body disagrees, still trying to flex in your bonds, still feeling every nerve ending like it's coated in sweat and rust.

She finishes with your hair but doesn't remove the cuff around your neck.

"I'm not going to gag you unless you start making a ruckus," she says. "I'd rather not have you choke yourself to death. It would be inconvenient."

"What are you going to do?" You ask.

"Monsters have to be understood before they can be stopped," she says, putting a finger on your chin and yanking your jaw open to inspect your teeth. You consider biting her finger off, have no doubt that you could if you wanted to, but then she is pouring a hot liquid down your throat and you are choking on blood, sweat, iron, bits of the inside of your mouth disintegrating from whatever substance she just put in you, and the thrumming of her voice…

"This isn't going to kill you, Jaeger, we already know titans can't be killed like this, but all the other ones have fought too hard for us to really experiment on."

Titan titan titan titan.

Your throat is screaming for release, you're choking back pieces of your throat and wondering when, when in the name of all that is good are you going to finally pass out.

Finally your stomach gains enough control for you to vomit, and the woman unlocks the cuff around your neck. You tilt your head to the side and watch as a trail of blood gushes onto the floor from your mouth, and when it is done she jams your head back into its position. She doesn't replace the cuff, and you are too weak, your throat feeling like a cheese grater has been scraped over it. You say nothing.

She leaves you alone for an hour, and you don't dare to close your eyes. If you do, the heat rushes back into your veins, a reflex reaction, and all you can see is red trails across human arms, all you can smell is rust and ashes, all you can taste are human bones, but your throat has nothing left to scream with. You wonder if she has made you mute on purpose before she does her experiments.

You are ashamed of the fact that you cannot cry, you are not afraid, you feel as if you have always been on this table, will always be here, will always deserve to be here.

For the common good. For humanity.

Bones and blood and small children's red remains coating your throat, ripping out your insides, you are not human you have never been human-

Close your eyes and open them, feel titan blood soaking your insides. You want off this table you want back in the streets you want to kill monsters you deserve to kill monsters—

Closing your eyes for a millisecond, you picture flying, you picture shards of flesh flying off from the back of a titan neck. You picture them falling underneath your blade. You picture pure blood on your fingers. You picture yourself erupting into flames that take the largest monster down, burning a hole through its neck and laughing as your skin peels from your small human body.

You open your eyes, and all you can see from your position is your hand, palm still red and raw, the needle jammed through it into the table. Pulsing anger, and you can feel it transforming you, turning every cell in your body into an escape route.

Titan titan titan titan.

Monster.

STOP.

You shift your head on the table, feel a sensation of pain as your ear scrapes against a sharp edge jutting at the edge of the table.

When the woman returns, you have sheared off an ear and the shorn bits of hair that you still have are coated in a layer of titan blood. You are unconscious, your body small, eyes red rimmed, bones crumbling into something dangerous. In your mind you are in a field somewhere, burying your human form among daisies.

Now is the time of monsters.


End file.
